Schaumburg to share St. Peter Church landscape costs

Schaumburg plans to issue a landscaping grant to St. Peter Lutheran Church to help resolve a dispute with its neighbors by installing more screening landscaping.Mark Welsh | Staff Photographer

Schaumburg plans to issue a landscaping grant to St. Peter Lutheran Church to help resolve a dispute with its neighbors by installing more screening landscaping around their soccer fields and basketball courts.Mark Welsh | Staff Photographer

Schaumburg plans to issue a landscaping grant to St. Peter Lutheran Church to help resolve a dispute with its neighbors concerned about noise from people who use the church's athletic field.Mark Welsh | Staff Photographer

Mark Welsh/mwelsh@dailyherald.comSchaumburg plans to issue a landscaping grant to St. Peter Lutheran Church to help resolve a dispute with its neighbors by installing more screening landscaping around their soccer fields and basketball courts.

Schaumburg officials have agreed to share the cost of new landscaping at St. Peter Lutheran Church that will screen both a soccer field and a parking lot for a historic schoolhouse on the site from residential neighbors.Daily Herald file photo

Schaumburg officials have agreed to pay half the cost of new landscaping to screen St. Peter Lutheran Church from a neighboring subdivision, as the landscaping also will screen a parking lot the village built to serve a historic museum on the site.

The village is requiring the landscaping as part of an effort to resolve a neighborhood dispute over the use of the church's soccer field by athletic organizations not affiliated with the church.

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Neighbors complained about the noise and use of lights for nighttime soccer games on the property by the youth soccer league Sports Club United.

Because Sports Club United has now merged with the Schaumburg Athletic Association, it will no longer use the St. Peter field. However, the church has already begun receiving requests from other organizations to use the soccer field.

Before the neighbors' complaints reached village officials' ears, the church had been unaware it needed a special-use permit for other organizations to use the field.

The permit requires the landscaping to be in place by Oct. 1 and bans the use of portable toilets on or near the church's soccer field. After the permit was approved last month, St. Peter officials submitted a written request for financial assistance.

And the village agreed to pay half the cost as a 1997 agreement with the church allowed the village to expand parking on the St. Peter property for the historic museum, which is in an old schoolhouse relocated to the church site in the early 1980s, Schaumburg Community Development Director Julie Fitzgerald said.

Last week, Schaumburg Planning and Permits Manager Tom Farace reported to the planning, building and development committee that the estimated cost of the new trees and shrubs would be approximately $3,400. The committee concurred with the recommendation to share the cost as about half the landscaping will screen the additional museum parking.

The village board is expected to give final approval to the deal at its meeting Tuesday night.

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